the last few weeks, i have been getting more and more "failed" discs... most of the time, they dont strictly fail... they just lock up halfway through burning. usually between 30% and 50%, although the one i am doing right now got to 74% before stopping. clicking on the cancel button doesnt do anything, and i have to reboot to get access to my dvd writer drive again.

i thought it might be the media, but ive tried two types of CDRs (infiniti and verbatim) as well as DVDRs (some random printable dvd+r's and verbatim dvd+rw

it's a lite-on DVDRW LH-20A1H drive running ubuntu 7.10

the NeroHistory.log files shows this for when i just burned a dvd image...
(previously i tried burning direct to disc)

after creating an nrg disc image, i tried burning it to dvdrw at 2.2x. it locked up at 74% and has been doing this for 25 minutes+ now (it was only 1gb worth of data)... there are no updates to the logfile for this disc (does it write it after burning/failing/etc? because i dont usually get that far, i end up having to kill it/reboot.

I thought it might be because i had other programs running in the background (like ktorrent and firefox with around 40 open tabs) but this time i'm just running firefox with one open tab (this one, and top is showing i'm never using more than 3% cpu, there's plenty of RAM free, and there is nothing other than nero using my discs.

normally i burn files from an external usb hard disk, which i thought might be the issue, so this time i burned to an NRG file on my desktop/local drive.

i'm going to drop the drive into another machine when i get to work tomorrow to see if it is faulty/has the same problems in windows. the drive is only a few months old, and the type of media i use hasnt changed. it never used to be a problem, now i'm lucky if i get one successful disc for every 10 burned. cdr or dvd, it doesnt matter.

i suspect nero is at fault. can anyone give me any suggestions before i rip the drive out and try it in another box?

(i'm using nero 3.0.1.3 btw)

heres an example logfile from when a disc failed but told me it had, instead of just locking up on me...

(not sure if its any use or not)


cheers.

From the log it seems to me a media issue.

Rewritable media can be really problematic, and low quality write once discs are the same.

Try again with a proven quality disc. I suggest a Verbatim (a write once disc, not a rewritable) and see if this solve.

Just to exclude a software problem, another test you can do is burn a disc with k3b.

the "random printable" dvdrs arent low quality ones, i just cant remember the make (they never were an issue before i moved to linux/nero - i used to get one coaster in maybe 30 discs)... but i'll dig out a decent branded dvdr and try it.

are there any other logfiles i could try looking at.

dmesg shows the following:

would the vmnet message be an issue (vmware network driver i'm guessing).. or maybe the first two lines...
[ 312.059644] ide-cd: cmd 0x1e timed out
[ 312.059653] hda: lost interrupt

I've not had any issues (that i remember) using other cd writing programs (i used serpentine to burn a cdr last week), but i'll try again just to make sure.

thanks for your help so far anyway

*edit*
just installing k3b now, but can't test it until i get home later... i'm currently VNCed into my box, and nero is still stuck at 74% from earlier on...

ok, i ended up setting up windows again, and installing nero 7. just tried two dvd+r's burning two different dvd video discs, and they both worked perfectly, so this is looking like it is definitely a linux/nero issue.

just doing some more testing now. once i'm finished burning the stuff i need now, ill reboot back into ubuntu and try it with a sony dvd+r i just stole off a mate.

ok, i burned 8 dvdrs in a row in windows with no coasters.
i burned two discs in nerolinux, the first was a dvd video nrg file at 2.2x and it was successful. the second was just files off the hard disk at 4x and it got to 37% and froze up on me. i was using a sony dvd+r disc with both, so its not the media, and its not the writer.

the vmnet* alerts in dmesg are to do with firestarter, i have disabled logging for it to shut that up.


it has to be something in the nero/linux setup i'm missing, right....?

heres the NeroHistory.log file entry for the successful burn. again., nothing in there for the failed one.

Do you have other programs running in the background? Do you have a lot of programs that in your startup? Something is eating up all your memory. Try shutting down as many programs as you can.

ooh yeah, didnt notice that before. i'll keep an eye on my ram usage next time and see if it helps...

You should also think about switching to 3.0.2.1. As this release has fixed this ISO DVD Image issue, this might also be the bug that you have.

yeah, last few times i tried to grab it from http://www.nero.com/eng/downloads-linux3-update.php

it says "no file or directory" when i try to grab it (x64 deb version)

just tried K3b, and it burned the first dvd data disc i tried perfectly... will try it some more

Does that version of Ubuntu use the libata driver for IDE devices? If so, you might consider turning off the hald polling of the device as for SOME drive firmware's...there is a bug which causes the IDE channel to freeze during polling....and the system "thinks" everything is OK, but the actual burn process will become interrupted.

I use htop and usually kill the process ...as there is no firmware update yet for my drive (not a lite-on...but I saw this bug for a couple of drives somewhere)...so I live without that polling and just manuallly mount disks. Of course, Nero won't want it mounted anyway to burn...so burn away and see what happens.

Sounds like that problem considering your messages file up there...with the time-out.